Good Food is Everybody's Business
This essay by Quita Ortíz on the work of Ralph Vigil and his family to restore traditional food and farming systems in northern New Mexico highlights one of the most significant qualities of acequia agroecosystems, their rootedness and adaptability to place.
Food safety.
This is another truth about modern times in America no one wants to look at. The idea is that science and modern medicine has ended serious food-borne illness. But the fact is, we have lots more now and it is growing to epidemic proportions.
This is the story of the bean, the staple food cultivated by humans for over 10,000 years. From the lentil to the soybean, every civilization on the planet has cultivated its own species of bean. The humble bean has always attracted attention – from Pythagoras’ notion that the bean hosted a human soul to St. Jerome’s indictment against bean-eating in convents (because they “tickle the genitals”), to current research into the deadly toxins contained in the most commonly eaten beans.
What does farmland protection have to do with what’s on your dinner table? Or maybe it should be put this way: What does what’s on your dinner table have to do with farmland protection? Think about it… Today, the typical American prepared meal contains, on average, ingredients from at least five countries outside the US. What if we had to grow our food “back home?”
Kelly Sanderbeck, Annual Fund Manager for PCC Farmland Trust, talks about the Trust and how they work with farms like Jubilee Biodynamic Farm, Carnation WA, to preserve farmland in Washington.
Long acknowledged as “the nation’s salad bowl,” California’s farm belt is facing some thorny challenges from our changing climate: rising temperatures, an uncertain water supply and more abundant pests that threaten multi-billion-dollar crops. The half-hour documentary Heat and Harvest, a co-production of KQED and the Center for Investigative Reporting, examines these threats and offers some potential solutions.
Mid-September should be the perfect time for a trip along the North Cascades Highway, through the Methow Valley, up and down the Okanogan River Valley from the Canadian border to the confluence with the Columbia River, and back home. This time the perfect weather and lovely views, were marred with smoke from many recent and active forest fires. However your GoodFood World publishers – that would be Ken and me – drove right through and visited old friends, made new friends, and got in a bit of history.
